AI, Agents, & Agentic Apps

W16 Building Your Own Agent Harness

03/24/2027

4:00pm - 5:15pm

Level: Intermediate to Advanced

Rockford Lhotka

VP of Strategy

Xebia

An AI "agent" isn't just the model (LLM), it is also the code that interacts with the user, the environment, and the LLM: the harness.

We use harnesses every day: GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, ChatGPT, etc.

When you build apps that _integrate_ AI, you will probably write your own harness code that calls the LLM when appropriate.

In this session you will learn how to create a robust harness that includes user interaction, cross-app interaction, long-term memory, skills, tool calling, and other behaviors a harness might implement.

You will learn:

  • What is a harness and what might it do?
  • How to manage user interaction and LLM "turns"
  • How to leverage the environment for memory, skills, calling external services